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S.C. Senators at odds over Jasper Ocean Terminal board

COLUMBIA — Beaufort County’s senators have put the breaks on a South Carolina Senate resolution aimed at tightening control over the state’s appointees to the Jasper Ocean Terminal Joint Project Office board.

The resolution, S. 1410, was up for a final Senate vote following a 37-0 vote by last week. But instead of being sent to the House for consideration, Senators Tom Davis, R-46th District, and Clementa Pinckney, D-45th District, stopped the legislation’s progress using a Senate maneuver, effectively making it much harder for it to become law this year.

The resolution, introduced by Sen. Larry Grooms, R-37th District, would require that a majority of South Carolina’s three Jasper port board members vote on an action that commits state funds, in order for the action to stand. It also calls for any votes related to dredging and navigability to be blessed by the S.C. Savannah River Maritime Commission first.

The resolution was the Legislature’s response to actions taken by the Jasper Ocean Terminal Joint Project Office board during its last meeting in Charleston on March 19. That’s when one of South Carolina’s three members, Bill Bethea of Bluffton, had voted in favor of an “Opportunity Plan” relating to depositing dredge spoils.

The plan altered the way material dredged as part of the state of Georgia’s Savannah harbor deepening would be placed onto the site of the proposed Jasper Ocean Terminal on South Carolina’s side of the river. Proponents of the Opportunity Plan say it will cut $335 million from the $5 billion Jasper port and defer about $200 million in costs for the terminal’s first phase.

“I have worked with Bill (Bethea) on the Jasper port project for the past five years, and there is no one who is more knowledgable about the issues involved or who is more committed to making the port a reality,” said Davis in an email Friday.

South Carolina’s other two members abstained from voting, citing legal questions about whether the authority over the issue at hand rested instead with the Savannah River Maritime Commission.

In an interview Thursday, Pinckney defended Bethea, and expressed his opposition to the Senate resolution.

“It unfairly singles him out,” said Pinckney.

The senator added that Bethea “has been an honest broker from the beginning of this project. ... His credentials are impeccable, he is knowledgeable, and his heart is in seeing this project through.”

In a four-page memo emailed to about a dozen key lawmakers, staff and local leaders, on Thurdsay, Bethea detailed his objections to the Senate resolution and addressed what he said were inaccuracies in the Senate resolution and Grooms’ statements.

In the email, Bethea, referring to the March 19 vote, said the Senate resolution “intended to reprimand and undermine a recent vote of the Jasper port body.”

“The vote in question was to take advantage of an approximately $335 million possible windfall improvement to the Jasper port site,” wrote Bethea on Thursday. “This action would in no way influence the outcome of the battle by South Carolina to defeat the dredging in the Savannah River.”

Bethea and Jim Balloun, one of three Georgia members of the bi-state Jasper port board, who serves as its current chairman, have both stressed that if Georgia’s harbor expansion project fails to move forward for any reason, the Opportunity Plan is moot. On Thursday, Pinckney emphasized the point, and said contrary to some legislators’ statements, supporting the Opportunity Plan does not equate to supporting Georgia’s dredging project.

South Carolina legislators have been furious for months over Georgia’s $652 million plan to deepen about 38 miles of the river in order to prepare for larger vessels after the expansion of the Panama Canal in 2014. The Palmetto State lawmakers fear the deepening project will wreck the ecology of the shared river, kill the Jasper port plans, and help Georgia at the expense of the Port of Charleston.

Bethea also expressed concern for the future Jasper port. But he said it was the Senate resolution that would, “have the collateral effect of sounding the death knell to port development in Jasper County for many years to come.”

In an email Thursday, Balloun of Georgia, called Bethea’s letter “factual.”

“The more people learn the facts about the Jasper project, the better,” he said.